The Art of Dining - pop-up review

Historic buildings needn't be dull — especially when you have a five course meal and an opera singer to bring them to life. Emily Jupp pays a visit to a pop-up restaurant in a National Trust property, the latest endeavor from cult dining collective, The Art of Dining

The Art of Dining - pop-up review

The Art of Dining - pop-up review

1/2

Magic: The Art of Dining’s latest pop-up, entitled A Night with the Mistress, is set in the grounds of Fenton House, a 17th-century merchant's house in Hampstead

2/2

A feast for the eyes: Table decorations at Art of Dining's event, A Night with the Mistress, included edible flowers and stuffed birds

The problem with visiting old historic properties is they can all get a bit samey.

When I was a child, my parents, in their tireless quest to make education fun, took me round countless castle remains, dead poets’ houses, Tudor manors, prime examples of Georgian architecture and former Royal residences. I was fascinated at first but after a while it all began to blur into one huge historic quagmire; here’s a creaky cottage housing an old sock once worn by Henry VIII’s second cousin, there’s a Victorian bed pan, here are some van Dycks exactly like the van Dycks at the National Gallery and at Houghton Hall and a million other old houses up and down the country that look and feel and smell EXACTLY THE SAME. Call me a philistine but I sort of feel that once you’ve seen 101 historic properties, you’ve seen them all.

To tempt me out of my moratorium on places of historic value, you’d have to do something pretty special, and that’s what the beautiful people at The Art of Dining, a pop-up dining series that’s been running on and off around London’s edges for about two years, have managed to do. Their latest series of dining events is held at National Trust properties, and they are brilliant.

The deal is you buy a ticket (around £55), get to wander around the historic house/ancient watchtower/historically significant hovel, and then comes the good bit, you have a themed dinner, designed to harmonise with the surroundings. There is also always some form of entertainment, which is a surprise. A previous pop-up by The Art of Dining was at a Georgian house in Rainham and an actor pretending to be the original owner – a rich sea merchant – regaled us with tales from his time at sea and read extracts from the genuine sea merchant's diaries. It brought the venue to life in a way my rusty old imagination simply couldn't.

The Art of Dining’s most recent endeavour, entitled A Night with the Mistress, was set in the grounds of Fenton House, a 17th-century merchant's house in Hampstead. We arrived after a sweaty tube journey to be greeted with sunshine and champagne in a well-tended wild flower garden. No area was out of bounds and so we romped around the walled gardens, gently declined the eager offer of a guided tour and, in a swift 20 minutes, took in the house’s roof terrace and piano-filled rooms. Bizarrely, every single room at Fenton House has a piano in it, sometimes three or four. There’s even a teeny cupboard with a misshapen one tucked inside. The eager National Trust guide told us that the pianos didn’t come with the house but were donated in 1937 by an eccentric collector of keyboard instruments, named Benton Fletcher. It’s amazing what becomes interesting when you have a glass of champagne in your hand.

Dinner was a laid-back affair set on long tables under a marquee in the grounds, with fresh white tablecloths decorated with fairy lights, vases of wild flowers and stuffed birds. Kezia Bienek, an opera singer, provided the entertainment. She was playing the part of Dorothea Jordan, a companion of King William IV and a celebrated actress in her day, whose portrait is displayed inside the house. Just before the first course, Bienek, who has an impressive set of lungs, suddenly belted out Quando Me'n Vo' from Puccini's La Bohème to a background of awkward silence and frightened eye contact from the dinner guests. This continued between every course, which stemmed the happy flow of the evening. It might have worked within the house but out on the lovely sun-drenched lawns it felt unnecessarily theatrical.

The meal had a floral theme, with some delightful little surprises. The hibiscus flowers in our glasses of champagne were edible, and one course, described on the menu as ‘soil’, was a mini plant pot containing ground figs, olives and pumpernickel, with a soft crumbly texture. This was accompanied by a salad, which we were told to decorate with the edible flowers in the vases on the table, and was topped off with a glug of salad dressing from a pretty silver watering can.

Drinks included a decent selection of reds and whites, including a delicious English wine, Nyetimber Classic Cuvee, a sparkling white from West Sussex (£12 a glass, £50 a bottle), but in the interest of thoroughness, we chose the wine flight: five 75ml glasses each paired with a course of the meal (£17.50 for the lot) which a sommelier talked us through. Some of the tastes were rather daring and the first glass in particular, a Manzanilla Pasada Barbiana 15 per cent, Rodriguez La-Cave (Delgado Zuleta) was complex to the point of baffling: almondy, dry, yeasty with an after-tang of cut grass, it was strange on its own but worked with the sweet and salty flavours of the trout and crispy frog leg Thai-style broth starter.

The dessert, paired with a small glass of the fresh, lemony Nyetimber, was elderflower and gooseberry Eton Mess, which came in the form of a fool with crunchy and gooey bits of meringue, dotted with elderflower and gooseberry. It seemed fairly tame compared to the courses that preceded it, but then we were each given a blindfold to put on while we ate it. This was a perfectly judged little touch that got us giggling with our tablemates and getting cream over our faces. Like the rest of the night it was strange but rather wonderful.